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rezaa in the Nation's Capital*LUTHER H. EVANSLAST DECEMBER the Library of Congress celebrated the cen-tennial of Texas statehood (1845-1945) by opening an ex-hibition of Texana which occupied the whole of one of the largegalleries in the main building as well as the photographic galleryin the basement. The exhibit was painstakingly assembled fromthe various divisions and collections of the Library by NelsonR. Burr, handsomely mounted by Philip F. Bell, acting exhibitsofficer, and officially opened with an address by CongressmanLuther A. Johnson of Corsicana. The opening was attendedby most of the Texas delegation in Congress and by many mem-bers of the Texas Society of Washington. While it was naturallyan occasion in which any Texan would take special pride, it wasbut one of a series of exhibitions and addresses which theLibrary has held and will continue to hold for the successiveanniversaries of the several states. The occasion offered a mostappropriate opportunity to survey the position of the Libraryof Congress in the important field of Texana.The object in this survey is not to parade strength, forthere is more Texana in Texas than there is in Washington.Special circumstances and opportunities, however, have madethe Library of Congress strong in every field of Americana,whether or not there has been any conscious or deliberate at-tempt at specialization. The Library of Congress does have awell-rounded collection of Texana, but it has perhaps an insuf-ficient number of those rarest items upon which the specialistcollector delights to congratulate himself. A unique item cannotbe in two repositories at once; but it is true that the NationalLibrary has too few of those rare specimens of Texana whichare known to exist in only one or two or three copies. Thereasons for this defect are fairly obvious, one of them being thatthe Library of Congress has only been gradually accepted asthe National Library, whether by Congress or the public. Theearlier concept of its function tended to be too narrowly utili-tarian, as the debates of 1815 on the purchase of Thomas Jef-*This paper was presented as an address at the annual meeting of theTexas State Historical Association in Austin on Aljril 27, 1946.